American Elegy
By Dr. Jim Ferguson
I lost my mother last week. Pat Ferguson lived 98 long and vigorous years, but the infirmities of age and then pneumonia proved too much for her. Her mind remained clear and she understood that she could not recover the independence that once defined her life. So, after breakfast and coffee at the rehab center, she closed her eyes for the last time on July 20, 2024, and she was gone.
I was hesitant to tell her story outside of family and close friends, but my wife and editress, Becky, encouraged me to do so, not as a traditional obituary, but as an American elegy.
Like JD Vance, my mother came from humble beginnings. In fact, she was born at home on property now occupied by Mount Olive Elementary School in South Knoxville. Two of her grandchildren, two of her great grandchildren and my mom all attended Mt. Olive.
That school seems altogether fitting because my mother, after graduating from the University of Tennessee with a major in English, became an elementary school teacher. She met and then married my dad, whom she met at UT, and became a homemaker where she met the challenge of raising three boys. I’ve heard her say, “Books would fly off the shelf when her boys entered a room.” And after her boys were launched, she became a successful real estate agent and later a travel agent.
It’s interesting to observe the traits you inherit from your parents. Like my mother, I became a teacher (of patients, medical students, etc.) and I shared her wanderlust for travel. Perhaps my writing avocation was even genetic.
I chose to share my mother’s elegy in The Focus because my mother was an accomplished woman, a conservative patriot, and long ago quit reading the “daily paper” where Knoxville obituaries are usually printed and are quite expensive.
Every day there are fewer of the Greatest Generation who, like my mom, survived the privation of the Depression and WWII. As a result, mom remained frugal all her life. She would have been appalled by the price of a traditional newspaper obituary.
Names are important and typically it is our parents who name us. In antiquity, a name was considered to be a reflection of the person’s character. Similarly, where Becky and I worked doing mission work in Guatemala, birth certificates were non-existent and surnames were often the flowery hopes of parents.
In America we sometimes get to choose our moniker. We recently heard about JD Vance’s “Mamaw.” When my mom chose her name as a grandmother, she chose to be NaNa. I wish I could remember why. When our first grandchild began to talk, he called Becky, “Behbe” which eventually became BB as his baby talk matured. And it seemed right that I became JD (JimDad).
These days, I’m trying to live more in the current moment rather than worrying about the future. I have never been one to fret about the past because there’s nothing I can do about what has been. My mother is gone and no longer has to worry about her family in these troubled times or their futures. But I do. My mother will be interred in the Veterans Cemetery with my father who was a navy pilot during WWII. But my “tour of duty” continues.
I vow to resist the lies and the great evil that has corrupted our leaders, government agencies and perverted the minds of so many. I’m a doctor and have 50 years of experience dealing with delusional thinking as seen in schizophrenia, manic depressive illness or alcohol withdrawal. However, all rational people see the delusional hatred of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
Disturbingly, a recent poll found that one third of Democrats think that President Trump staged the assassination attempt. And when asked to explain that a man was murdered and two others were shot along with Trump, the TDS answer was “Trump is capable of anything.” I’ve worked in scary emergency room settings with crazy people who scare the hell out of me. God help us from delusional people with TDS!
When we are young, parents are our heroes. It’s funny what you remember, and it may sound silly, but I remember my mother heroically defending me when my ex-military, engineer father demanded that I learn and recite the multiplication tables at seven years old. Since becoming a man, I can’t remember having a hero until President Trump stood with blood on his face and defiantly raised his fist after the assassin failed.
Tucker Carlson said, “A leader’s courage gives courage to his people.” It’s now our duty to be courageous. It’s no longer acceptable to play it safe and “go along to get along.” Tolerance has led to acceptance of delusional thinking. Corruption has resulted and we are on the brink of collapse.
The dam of lies has broken and rational people all over the world have seen the truth behind the curtain. Democrats like Kamala and their media stooges colluded and lied about Biden’s cognitive impairment. The same liars and party bosses (Obama, Schumer, Pelosi), who for years told us Joe Biden was fine, then engineered a coup to remove him as a presidential candidate when they determined he was damaging fund raising and would lose the presidency to Trump and damage other Democrat candidates. So much for democracy and the voters who overwhelmingly selected Joe Biden as their Democrat candidate.
President Trump became a changed man by his encounter with death on July 13 at 6:11 pm EST (read Ephesians 6:11). In a far less dramatic way, I became a changed man late in medical school when I returned to my Christian faith.
Robert Frost’s immortal poem of two roads dividing in the forest and him taking “the road less traveled and it made all the difference” is my story and President Trump’s. I challenge you to be courageous and join us on the road to Make America Great Again.
